


Burning for the Universe

by SilverWolf7



Series: Kinkmeme prompt stories [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Burns, F/M, Massage, Pain, Pre-Relationship, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Stigmata (Freeform)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1776409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverWolf7/pseuds/SilverWolf7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat has a little problem with burns appearing around his wrists and pains in his side from an invisible arrow and sometimes his shoulders pop out of their sockets.  He has no idea why this happens once a perigee, like clockwork, for most of his life.  </p><p>He never wanted anyone to know.  Why did Kanaya have to go after him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burning for the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for this kinkmeme prompt:
> 
> "I don't know if maybe I've just missed it, but with the whole to-do with Signless being essentially Troll Jesus of Nazarath, I've seen people talk about his followers, and Karkat getting involved with said followers and such, but I don't think I've ever seen one where sometimes Karkat bleeds from his wrists and his side. Or maybe nothing that extreme, he just get really painful bruises there.
> 
> Basically, I think it'd be nice to see a fic where Karkat wears longsleeved shirts because some really freaky shit happens with wrists sometimes- bleeding or bruising or sores encircling them- and he has no idea why. Somebody sees it on the meteor or maybe in a sburbless au, and knows about The Sufferer, and puts two and two together, and tries to calm him down. Or someone who has no idea about it- nor do they give a shit- figures out that other then being painful for a bit, it doesn't do any serious damage, and so attempts to calm him down, and promises to look out for/protect him. Or because I hate myself, Gamzee finds out and while he's not a Signless cultist, he can appreciate a Miracle when he sees one, and treats him as such. Could turn Pale or Red or something in between or maybe just totally platonic, honestly I'm not very picky, just as long as Karkat has to deal with being affected by something that happened to his ancestor ages ago and maybe freaking out but just genuinely being unhappily resigned to being the freakest mutant freak to have ever been hatched."
> 
> I had Kanaya be the troll because of the Dolorosa.

Burning For The Universe

 

The meteor was just as he remembered it last time he was here, so he only got his team lost a few times before he found the computer lab. They were all tired and angry. All that time, all those dead Aradiabots showing how many mistakes he had made to get them there in the first place, and it had all been completely and utterly ruined. Just like everything in his life.

Stupid fucking mutant that he was, nothing could ever be a good thing for him. Ever.

He chose a computer over in a corner hoping that it would keep him away from everyone else, but there was no point in that, because the room only had 12 computers, all reasonably close together. Sollux took the one to his right and Terezi deeming to stay near him as always, took the one behind him to his left and along the other wall.

After claiming the computer as his own, he got up, clapped his hands together and shouted at the others gathered there.

“Alright, game over. There’s plenty of room on this meteor for all of us. Let’s not degrade into infighting and killing each other. We’ve lived with each other for weeks now, and we can continue doing so.

“There are rooms through the transportalizer and one up from that, not down! Got that? There are twelve of them. All of them already marked with our signs. I am going to go lie down, because fuck you all, I need a break.”

He was beginning to feel an inexplicable need to pap everyone in the room to make sure they were all ok. Add to that a huge wave of anger was crashing down on top of his think pan, making it hard to think of anything else other than to scream obscenities to everyone, while simultaneously hugging them.

He only ever felt like this before ‘it’ happened. And he really, really didn’t want anyone to know of how much of a freak he really was.

He grabbed the sleeves of his shirt with his thumbs and pulled them down just in case it happened before he got out of the lab. Already the pain was starting to creep up on him and he knew it got bad. Really bad. Sometimes it was worse than others and he would break down into tears with the feeling of it. But the emotions of crushing anger and the undeniable need to pap the entire universe was so strong, he’d act like more of an idiotic asshole than he already was.

Hunching in on himself as a sharp pain in his side hit him, he let out a grunt without meaning to just before he hit the transportalizer and got out of there.

He just hoped someone didn’t hear him.

He really hoped that when he fell to his knees in the small room between the transportalizers between the lab and their already picked out blocks. He was finding it hard to breathe now. He could swear there was an arrow in his side and his wrists were burning. His wrists were burning! Shackles in the form of his sign holding him up and the flogging jut he was chained to was stretching his shoulders out of their sockets.

He shook his head, shaking the vision away and took some deep breaths. If he didn’t calm himself, he was going to start screaming, and that was never a good thing. Sometimes he screamed words and couldn’t remember afterwards what he said. Sometimes he remembered exactly what he said. He was pretty sure what he forgot was exactly the same as what he remembered though, because when he did hold the memory, it was always the same speech.

See, this was the reason he was always so angry with everyone. He couldn’t go a perigee without this happening. Thankfully, it only lasted a short period of time, roughly fifteen minutes at the most. Sometimes less than that, if he was having a particularly merciful time of it.

It always left a wide ring of burns on his wrists too. Not bad and they always healed, but they hurt so much. There was never a mark on his side though, where he could swear the arrow ended up screwing up his insides. Of course, he had recently been stabbed there regardless, but hey, at least if a mark did appear there, he’d likely never see it through the scarring the stabbing caused.

His breathing evened out as the pain started to fade away and his shoulders relaxed. To his shock, he felt a hand on his head, slowly running fingers through his hair.

Oh no! Someone had not only seen him during this odd and humiliating phase of his, but had stayed to watch it play out and comforted him and he hadn’t even realised. He turned his head to one side, knowing right now that his wrists were on display, because his sleeves had rolled down, where his hands were still up behind his back.

Slowly he lowered his hands and rubbed at his shoulders. He knew better than to touch the burns. They never got infected or smelt like burning flesh or anything like that, but he still was always wary that he could accidentally take off layers of skin if he touched them.

That and they would sting for days afterwards until they fully healed. No need to make it worse.

It was Kanaya of all people that was sitting beside him. One of his closest friends and the only one of them that wasn’t completely insane. She would hate him now that she knew how much of a freak he was. She probably thought he had purposefully been hurting himself.

“Karkat, why did burn marks suddenly appear on your wrists? I have never known this to happen before.”

He growled and shoved her hand off the top of his head. It appeared again, with the other, on his shoulders, where they begun rubbing away the soreness from having them twisted into such an uncomfortable position. He couldn’t help but let out a groan of pain.

It was five minutes of silence before he decided to answer, because she wasn’t going away. “I don’t know why this happens. It just happens out of fucking nowhere. Stupid thing is it is always at the same time, once a perigee. I can set my timing devices to it. I had to stop wearing a watch because of the burns. At least I can cover them with a shirt or something. No one else has ever seen. I’m already a freak, so I don’t want the others knowing.”

She let out a hmmm of agreement and didn’t let up on the shoulder rubbing. He was beginning to think that she was doing something right, because he had never come out of one of these in such little pain before.

After another minute of being soothed and pampered by Kanaya, who had surprisingly cool fingers for a mid blood, he let himself relax. She wasn’t going to tell anyone. He looked down at his wrists and frowned. “You Sylphs heal, right? Can you, maybe...try?”

“I don’t think that is quite how a Sylph’s healing power works. I believe it to be more specialized. I am supposed to be able to heal rips in space, or something along those lines. But yes, I can try.”

He held up his wrists to her, wary over the pain he knew would happen the moment she touched him there. Thankfully, her cool fingers were gentle and though it hurt like hell, he pushed through the pain and allowed her to wrap her hands around a wrist.

He watched her face instead of what she was doing, because it seemed much more interesting to watch her eyes scrunch up and closed, so serious with concentration. Her forehead had lines on it from the strain of trying and he found himself thinking it was actually kind of cute. He didn’t think he’d ever go red for her, or black for that matter, but pale...holy fuck was she something else.

The pain disappeared and he thought maybe she had done it, healed his wrists, until he dragged his gaze away from her face and down to where her hands were only to see that the burns were still there.

“Huh, what did you just do? The pain is gone, but the marks are still there...”

She sighed, opened her eyes and looked at her handiwork. A pleased smile made its way onto her face and he found himself grinning back. She looked into his eyes and they were alight with some interest in what she had just done. He’d never seen Kanaya so animated outside talks of fashion and rainbow drinkers.

“These wounds aren’t normal wounds. They are wounds carried over through time and space. I can’t heal the space problem fully without the time part being healed too, but I can help a little. Considering Aradia cannot heal, I doubt it will stop, but this should ease the pain when they do appear.”

“Time and space have something to do with this? How?!”

“I am thinking it may have something to do with an alternate you or, and do not take this the wrong way as I know you do not believe in such things, but perhaps it happened to your ancestor and you are feeling its effects through something he did.”

With the shoulders massaged and definitely in place (sometimes they popped out and god did he scream when that happened) and his wrists feeling much better without the burning sensation, he could objectively tell that they really were just superficial. He also noted for possibly the first time ever, that there were bruises mixed with the burns.

He grinned again at Kanaya and without thinking hugged her close. “Thanks. This is possibly the best thing to ever happen to me. Between my mutation and this shit, my life has pretty much been a painful mess. It’s nice to know I do have good friends that will try to help.”

She hugged him back and he could feel her smile into his shoulder. “You are quite welcome. And I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

He buried his head into her shoulder in return and nuzzled her shoulder a bit. She smelled good and good things were so hard to find.

It was odd that possibly the best he had ever felt was on the day where he had lost the most.

No one ever said he had to do things conventionally though.

He had always been a bit too soft for a troll anyway. It was good to know he had at least one person look out for him.


End file.
